The Campbell Academy Blog

Mixed ability sport

Coaching mixed ability sport, for me, has been one of the greatest metaphors for getting through life and work and all that stuff that goes with it.

For the record, though, all sports are mixed ability, and all teams are mixed ability.

The problem is not really that they are mixed ability; the problem is the gap between the best and the (least best).

I've been coaching the boy's football team since they were seven, and pretty much all football for children of that level starts as dramatically mixed ability.

One of the issues you encounter in that situation is the expectation of the parents of people who put their hands up and say they'd like to play football but are not really committed to playing football at all.

There is a wonderful anecdote among the football coaches that I'm with about the goalkeeper who ended up getting caught in his own net with his feet off the ground while the ball was at the other end of the pitch.

In order to do that, you have to turn around, face the wrong direction and climb the net while the game is actually going on, but back to the point.

The point about mixed ability, football or sport or work or anything else is that you get to look after the best ones or the worst ones, but you don't, for any length of time, get to look after both.

The problem with this is that the best ones and the worst ones know exactly who they are and what they can do, and everybody else in the team in the middle also knows this.

If you look after the ones who are the poorest performing, the best performing will leave and go somewhere else.

If you look after the best performing, the least performing will leave and go somewhere else.

If you try to look after both of those groups, you will look after neither, and your team will collapse and disappear.

I have seen this in our football club on several occasions; it seems to be the way of things.

So, the moral of the story is that you have to keep the ability stretch (and, as I think here, maybe even the pay stretch) at a manageable enough difference and distance.

Not too high with the highs and not too low with the lows, but if you decide to transfer in a superstar, you've already stretched the barrier so far; it's going to be a lot harder to look after the team.